“These figures, furthermore, represent only the distress which manifests itself. There is no question but that only a part of those in poverty, in any community, apply for charity. I think anyone living in a Settlement will support me in saying that many families who are obviously poor—that is, underfed, underclothed, or badly housed—never ask for aid or suffer the social disgrace of eviction. Of course, no one could estimate the proportion of those who are evicted or of those who ask assistance to the total number in poverty; for whatever opinion one may have formed is based, not on actual knowledge, gained by inquiry, but on impressions, gained through friendly intercourse. My own opinion is that probably not over half of those in poverty ever apply for charity, and certainly not more than that proportion are evicted from their homes. However, I should not wish an opinion of this sort to be used in estimating, from the figures of distress, etc., the number of those in poverty. And yet from the facts of distress, as given, and from opinions formed, both as a charity agent and as a Settlement worker, I should not be at all surprised if the number of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other large cities and industrial centres, rarely fell below twenty-five per cent. of all the people.”
Such are the conditions in America to-day; what they would be in the future, if present tendencies went on unchecked, the reader may learn by going to Europe, where industrial evolution has been slower in coming to a head, and where the people have been held down by religious superstition and military despotism. Let him take Mr. Richard Whiteing’s “No. 5 John Street”; or, if he has a particularly strong stomach, let him try Jack London’s “People of the Abyss,” or Charles Edward Russell’s terrifying story of the poverty of India, in his “Soldiers of the Common Good.” Here is a scene in a London park, selected, by way of example, from the first-named book:
“We went up the narrow, gravelled walk. On the benches on either side was arrayed a mass of miserable and diseased humanity, the sight of which would have impelled Doré to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of filth and rags, of all manner of loathsome skin-diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities and bestial faces. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen women, ranging in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe, possibly nine months old, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor with anyone looking after it. Next, half a dozen men sleeping bolt upright, and leaning against one another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in its sleeping mother’s arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with his head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep. ‘Those women there,’ said our guide, ‘will sell themselves for thru’pence or tu’pence, or a loaf of stale bread.’ He said it with a cheerful sneer.”
And then turn back to the preface: “It must not be forgotten that the time of which I write was considered ‘good times’ in England. The starvation and lack of shelter I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery, which is never wiped out, even in the periods of greatest prosperity. Following the summer in question came a hard winter. To such an extent did the suffering and positive starvation increase that society was unable to cope with it. Great numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January, 1903, to the New York Independent, briefly epitomises the situation, as follows: ‘The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who are craving every night at their doors for food and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.’”
And then consider that in the city where this was going on, the leading newspaper (the Times) was printing a three-column article setting forth the fact that competition had grown so great that it was now no longer possible for a “gentleman” to maintain his status with a family in London upon an income of half a million dollars a year!
Yet if one wishes for social contrasts, there is really no need of crossing the ocean. Mr. Schwab’s nine million dollar palace in New York will answer the purpose; or so will the St. Regis Hotel. The swinging doors of the St. Regis, so the visitor is informed, cost ten thousand dollars apiece; the panelling of the smoking-room cost forty-five thousand dollars, and the carriage-entrance rain-shed cost eighty-five thousand dollars. The walls of it are covered with a silk brocade, which cost twenty dollars a yard, and the ceiling is gilded with material costing one dollar an ounce. It cost a hundred thousand dollars to fit up the office, and four million dollars to build the whole structure. A two-room apartment in it, without meals, is valued at nine thousand six hundred dollars a year; and for your meals you may try—say, “milk-fed chicken” at two dollars for each tiny portion.
Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee
From Stereograph, Copyrighted 1906, by Underwood & Underwood
THE SOCIAL CONTRAST IN NEW YORK